This Is Our Luck, Baby, Running Out
by starinhercorner
Summary: Ghosts were supposed to phase right through you when you tried to touch them. Artemis wished she could truly pass that test for Zatanna. Artemis/Zatanna.


**Author's Notes: Spoilers, I suppose, for Artemis post-Depths if you haven't seen the SDCC trailer. Also the point-of-view, while consistently being third-person, is otherwise all kinds of wonky, but just roll with it**

* * *

Of course she believed in ghosts. The way the temperature in the room was supposed to take a sudden dive, the way a strange scent was supposed to tinge the air, the feeling of being watched—all the clichés. She'd even met a ghost years ago and conversed with it, however brief and one-sided the exchange had been. She'd seen enough of the supernatural and enabled enough it with her own breath to know a different kind of normal than most people.

So when it came to the figure carving a human-shaped hole in the fluorescent wall of city light, dark hair swept up in the wind like the gossamer curtains, Zatanna's first thought was not to question _what_ had just been skulking around in her bedroom before she opened the door, but to question _who_.

Her unexpected guest was volunteering neither a sound nor a move, and she stood just as still, quietly observing and assessing the situation when in another mood she would simply command the intruder to identify themselves. There was something familiar about the starkly back-lit hips set askew in a stance that seemed so firm and grounded despite its performer having paused halfway out the window. There was something else that she sensed, and she would admit it made much _more_ _sense_ for her to notice at all, in her bedroom's usual aura. Nearly every one of her possessions had its own mystical fingerprint (the result, for the most part, of a reckless phase years ago when after meeting M'gann she fancied herself a telekinetic, but she also did keep a small assortment of otherwise-charmed knick-knacks) but something out of place was causing a disturbance. It was low-level and somewhat masked; she felt it like a perfume in her veins but nothing more fixed and solid than that, nothing she could peg down. She'd been on stage all night, though, and barely sleeping for the past week and a half. Divining rods in the hands of a skeptic would do a better job of detecting water than she would at detecting anything that wasn't her pillow right now.

"Figured you weren't home," a voice rasped from the window, and while the figure relaxed in posture, Zatanna tensed. Something electric was left crackling in the air by the sound, and it _wasn't fair_ how memories lit up behind her eyes like after-images in the dark.

_But it couldn't be_, she thought to herself with a sharp, clean-cut certainty_. _

Her guest finally made the move from the windowsill to the floor and continued to advance, stepping gracefully and trailing shadows across the carpet blacker than those that still obscured the intruder's features. "But god, Zee, should I be concerned that you didn't freak at someone breaking into your apartment at two in the morning, or are you just that much of a badass now?"

_But it couldn't be. _"_Emoc onti eht thgil_!" Zatanna spat out, eyes narrowing and heat rising up her spine, and every bulb in the room clicked on to provide the light she called for. The woman before her went completely still, the face behind the striped, pointed mask betraying nothing. The mask and the suit were both foreign to Zatanna—not that she'd ever prided herself on being a walking database of costumed criminals. That was... someone else she knew. Zatanna's eyes only went thinner and her gloved fists tighter as the energy she'd picked up hints of before now swept through her head in broad, heavy strokes, but from a direction she couldn't ascertain. There was more nagging at the back of her thoughts than that, but everything was spinning, and nothing was clicking, because _it couldn't be_.

"You give up?" the woman asked, her voice a little too deep, her skin a little too light, her hair _way_ too dark, but compared to _what else, but...?_

Then nothing stopped spinning, but everything clicked. Because _it could be._

"Ah-Artemi-mis?" Zatanna breathed until the name nearly strangled itself out of her. She lifted a hand to cover her mouth but didn't quite reach it, and her fingertips hovered over her quivering lower lip.

Two half-gloved hands reached behind a neck to unhook the clasp on the band that clung to it, and just like magic it was Artemis standing there in black and orange, smiling like the small arsenal she was toting was weightless. _Just like magic_, Zatanna thought as she finally recognized the jagged yellow pendant as her own. _Of course._

Artemis pried the mask from the features it was fitted to and felt air on skin that was the right shade of _her_, and it was something that didn't have to be seen to be felt. And that was for the better, since every mirror lately had been either refusing to lie to her or refusing to tell the truth, and staring her reflection down trying to determine which it was hadn't been leading to pretty thoughts. "Should have known you'd give me black hair," Artemis groused, her voice creaking on its hinges like an old door opening for the first time in years. It was a hello. It was an awful shot at a hello, but even she could miss her mark with the right distraction.

"I always liked when you ran your fingers through mine—ah—I—I don't know if I want to hug you until the sun's up or _scream_ and _punch you in the face_," Zatanna whispered, then thundered, her words rolling out with the progression of an avalanche. Artemis watched tints of pink crowd around the blue of Zatanna's eyes until she was sure she had seen a tear break through the wet sheen that was coating them, when it was then considerably harder to meet Zatanna's gaze.

"...Those options aren't mutually exclusive, you know," Artemis responded as she busied herself with undoing the harness around her shoulders, placing her staff and mask at the foot of Zatanna's dresser, and setting her necklace atop the dresser's surface with Zatanna's other baubles—returning it, almost. Almost.

"Oh, _I know_," Zatanna said as she latched a hand around Artemis's bicep and tugged the whole arm down fiercely enough to make Artemis look back at her. "Artemis... how? What, when, wha...?" Her head shook, and her grip tightened. "If you're... fine, then... _why_?" She looked Artemis over and focused on the reported site of her _fatal_ injury, half-surprised that no pool of blood was seeping through to the open air. She let up the pressure on the arm and let her hand to slip down to Artemis's wrist, holding now as opposed to trying to crush. "You _are_ fine, right?"

"I'm..." Artemis nipped at the inside of her cheek with her back teeth, making her upper lip curl upward. The tears had loosened the pigment around Zatanna's eyes, and there were paths cleared in the grains of gray dust, lines drawn. "Here, aren't I?" she concluded, her lips settling on a smile.

Zatanna's eyes shot back up. "Are you answering me with a question, because right now I really don't know," she sighed. "Anything. So you tell me. _Talk _to me." She could feel a knob of bone in Artemis's wrist, possibly swollen to boot, filling the hollow center of her palm as she slid a white silk thumb across black leather; and she pressed it into the space for the sake of feeling something fit between her and Artemis now that Artemis was—_now_ that Artemis was alive?

Artemis knew the sound of that "Talk to me" very well, and the knot of nerves in her throat was hell to weave an answer through; Zatanna's tone hadn't done as much to help her cause as she had most likely intended. "I've got a really short list of things I can say, and a really long list of things I can't," Artemis offered as the safest, cleanest explanation she could muster, straining to keep her own voice composed. She drew her knuckles up to Zatanna's forearm where they connected like magnets, but her index finger broke loose to hide itself in Zatanna's sleeve, to stroke the skin it found there at a slow, steady, faithful pace. The anguished expression on Zatanna's face dulled but for a moment before it intensified, and Artemis could feel it becoming contagious. She wished she hadn't been so quick to do away with her mask. "Cat's got my tongue here, Zee."

"_What_ is going on?!" Zatanna demanded, breaking down the delicate system of touch they had established as she wrested her hand free.

With the haste in which Artemis delivered a response, her next statement and Zatanna's last may as well as have been fuelled by one breath shared between them. "_That one's _on the long list, that is pretty much _the top_ of the long list!"

"_Why?!_"

"It's—" Artemis's mouth was still open, but her lips were now otherwise out of service. The ensuing sounds were of a struggle to even make it to a stutter, to get out enough syllables to put her on the right track back to words. "—c—complicated!"

"Next to _what_, _what_ in our lives is _not_ complicated?" Zatanna roared, and the voice she relied upon so constantly to project on stage and in battle broke with all the pain of a bone. She could feel its splinters in her throat, and Artemis felt the shrapnel in her ears. "At least _now_, anyway."

"Zatanna..." Artemis said lowly, her voice smoothing out in contrast to how Zatanna's had crumpled. She took hold of Zatanna's elbows before Zatanna could cusp them herself. Zatanna's eyes darted off to the side, but Artemis focused on them anyway as she spoke, trying to will them back to her. "I'm here because I wanted to make sure you were okay after... hearing about me. You know... losing someone else. I _care_ about you, Zee. Pure and simple."

"Great. And where am _I_ on _that _list?"

"You're the only one that knows I'm here." She did her best not to make it sound so much like an eager offering, to instead keep her tone soft and her pace slow—to draw out all the honest comfort she could get from that one little truth. "I promise." It _was_ the truth, after all, so long as "here" covered no further territory than this room, and the small world of which their arms marked the boundries. Their world. And as Artemis coaxed Zatanna into a fuller embrace, that world only grew, despite how its proportions shrank. It was Artemis's favorite kind of magic.

Zatanna never hesitated to remind her that magic requires energy from the user, however, and it was no different as Artemis felt Zatanna's head shift against her shoulder and Zatanna's arms unwind from their tight coil around her waist.

"Considering it was _Nightwing_ that commissioned your new accessory, Artemis," Zatanna finally remarked as she set her arms stiffly at her sides, and she could see some color drain naturally from Artemis's face as she spoke, "And not you, I kinda doubt that."

Artemis had no answer for that—at least, no answer she could afford to give at the moment. She had assured herself on the way to Zatanna's apartment that this secret wasn't like the others she had kept before. There was an end in sight, so long as they all lived to reach it, and they would. Repairing the collateral damage could wait until the worst was over. But the bitter, wounded look in Zatanna's eyes told her that repairing the collateral damage maybe _should_ have waited until the worst was over.

"But it's nice to know you thought about me eventually! Really! It's sweet." As Zatanna took a few steps back and away, the energy in her voice was the opposite of enthusiasm, a photo-negative of it. "But I'm sure you've got your rounds to make with the rest of the League and the Team, so I won't hold you up any longer. _Llik eht sthgil_!" Every bulb in the room once again became an empty glass vessel as abruptly as her magic had sparked activity within it, leaving the window as the only source of light. Zatanna parked herself at the head of her bed, sweeping her coattails out from under her as she sat, and sighed. It was now _too_ dark, so she turned the lamp by her bed back on, manually this time. It gave off enough light for her to see and be seen, bringing out brown earthy tones in her usual midnight black hair and giving her jacket the look of having been burnt by the fire of her skin. The glow of the lamp hardly stretched itself far enough past Zatanna to reach Artemis, but with Zatanna now refusing to look at Artemis, it hardly mattered.

"I'm not making rounds, I'm out here for you," Artemis said gravely, her voice chilled by the cold shoulder Zatanna was giving her.

"Oh, you want me to help plan your 'surprise-I'm-not-dead' party? Cool! I'm game! I can do card tricks, pull a rabbit out of my hat, whatever!" Zatanna pinched the middle fingertip on her left hand and pulled off her glove in one deft motion, then did the same for her right. "But you're paying me by the hour. And balloon animals are extra." She tucked her gloves into a small inner pocket of her jacket, then shed the jacket itself.

"Zatanna..."

Zatanna carried on with settling in for the night, arranging on the floor to be stepped right into the next morning the heels she pried off of stockinged feet. "Wait, let me guess, you and Nightwing—and Wally, I'm _sure_—have already got that covered." Her jacket was folded as neatly as she could manage and was stowed away with her collar in the top drawer of her nightstand. There were tremors in her hands that grew harder to calm at the same rate that her voice flattened. "I'll keep an eye out for my invitation in the mail then."

"Zatanna!"

"It'll look stellar next to the invitation I got to your funeral. I hope you guys use that same lovely script font, it really classes up the occasion—and considering this whole thing is your idea of some sick prank—"

"You think this is a _prank_?!" Artemis spat out as she stepped forward. It was suddenly all too easy to forget the sight of tears welling up in Zatanna's eyes, and too dark in the shadow she cast to see it happening again. "It's a _cover_! Do you honestly think we would stage something like this for... for _kicks_?! That you can't trust us to be keeping secrets for a _good reason_?"

"Of course not. But do _you_ honestly think you can't trust me to keep your secrets?" Zatanna asked quietly, her words made up of the patter of lips and of the rasp of air and only the slightest flicker of her voice.

There was more to Artemis's argument, more to her defense, but it was suddenly all out the window. She didn't miss it, but to an extent she did envy it. She was way past the point of needing to be out that window herself.

"I thought you were dead, Artemis. Dead. Not being a jerk. Gone." Her demeanor had thawed out considerably, but only now did Zatanna start to shiver. "I would have given anything to know you were really okay—and I wish I was exaggerating. I wish things had never gotten so... _dire_, that whatever you're planning that involved faking your _death_ seems... _necessary_ to you. I wish..." A sigh fluttered its way out of her. "...I wish a lot of things."

Artemis sat down on the bed, and while her legs welcomed the plush mattress as a platform for stretching out their soreness, her first and only priority was to wrap her arms around Zatanna. "Me too, Zee." Earlier had been a fluke, she realized, because now it was hard to find the right places to tense and the right places to rest. She had become so familiar with the contours of Wally's muscles and the lengths of his bones, the science of his whole flesh and frame, that the dips and curves of Zatanna's body seemed too phantasmal in comparison to even be real, much less be held. Nonetheless, Zatanna eased into Artemis's uneasy arms without complaint.

"Just be careful, okay? The last time I made a big decision thinking it was what had to be done, I lost my dad." Zatanna spoke with the lower half of her face pressed into Artemis's shoulder, and her voice like a child's. While the warmth of her breath failed to permeate the orange leather, Artemis could feel small vibrations from Zatanna's words feed her pulse. Tact was not something Artemis been blessed with, but she had acquired enough of it down the line to know this was not the time to say her own dad wouldn't be much of a loss. Instead, she opted for a response less sour, and more sweet.

"I'll do my best," Artemis murmured softly as she took Zatanna's hand and brought it up to her lips, kissing Zatanna between two knuckles and feeling just below her nose the steam of her own breath disperse and condense on Zatanna's skin. The haze found its way to Zatanna's eyes before Artemis's lips could disengage, but she waited until they did so before moving her hand, and patience wasn't even half of it. She was savoring it. She traced two fingers along the curve of Artemis's jaw before pressing their tips into a corner of her mouth, and they summoned up a smile without a single word.

"Now hold still so I can _really_ kiss you," Zatanna whispered through a smirk of her own as she situated herself halfway onto Artemis's lap, her left knee skimming over a black strap on Artemis's right thigh.

"Wow, forwards and everything," Artemis whispered back, and the sentence could barely slip out before Zatanna's lips capped it off. Artemis immediately planted a hand at the base of Zatanna's neck and let her fingers take root in her hair, hardly needing that hold on her to keep her close, but wanting it. Her hair was like night falling over Artemis's shoulders, and it was the lightest thing Artemis had felt bearing down on them in what had to have been ages. This night was all they would have for what, in this moment, was an equally imperceptible amount of time; by the time the sun was back in the sky, Artemis would be back in its shadows. Another person just out of Zatanna's reach. Another ghost.

Zatanna kissed her like she was thinking the exact same thing.


End file.
